


the gathering thread

by betony



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Gen, revisionist myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23972179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: We wait in the dark. We will not die in vain.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24
Collections: Once Upon a Fic 2020





	the gathering thread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).



> Cheers to silveradept, for an inspiring and clever prompt! I hope you enjoy this!

We wait in the dark. We will not die in vain. 

“You go forth for the sake of all Athens,” Aegeus the King intoned when we embarked, cutting his hand to consecrate the prow of our ship with his heart’s blood. “You atone for our sins. We honor you.”

He lies beautifully. He always has. In the cramped interior of the ships, we remind each other how.

Among our ranks find Porphyrion, named for a giant but without any of its might or malice. He had thought only to try his hand at the military, and proven himself unmatched in the wrestling-matches held in the agora one harvest day. Unfortunately Aegeus--ever eager to show himself strong and fair-- had been among his combatants, disguised and dyed so that Porphyrion did not know what he had done until that last humiliating tumble in public that proved decisively that overconfident men of four-and-sixty ought not to challenge those of twenty-and-three. At the time the King had said nothing, only laughed boyishly and offered his congratulations; but in the winter, when the lots were drawn, his name was the first to be called.

Europe, in contrast, was a priestess, or at least meant to be, once she had taken her vows. But there were whispers that the House of the Maiden grew too powerful; that, should it swell in numbers, maidens should shun the nuptial rites and leave their hair unshorn. So Europe had been offered --an accident, we were told, that she should have been included; but having been chosen, it would not do to slight the gods. We heard what they meant: _do not seek escape. Even the gods cannot provide it_. 

(She holds court now in the prow of the ship, whispering prayers over those who wish it, forgiving the sailors their complicity, willing the winds to wreak vengeance behind them on wretched Athens, that would sacrifice their future to pay the blood price for a boy long dead.

It will not be enough, we know.)

Eurymedusa gouged her face when the guards came for her, and tells us now she wishes she might have done more. If only her namesake’s curse might have been visited upon her! Then she might have turned to stone all those who watched the sacrifices of Athens board the ship to Crete; then she might have shrieked her rage in a thousand long-dead tongues.

Demoleon does her one better and tries to throw himself from the upper decks on the first night out. The sailors find him out, of course. Left to themselves, they might leave him be; but sailors are a superstitious lot and no one has been able to work out precisely what role Lord Poseidon plays in this atrocity. Better, therefore, to offend no one involved and to ensure the captives arrive unscathed--and so they throw him back where we wait, and leave him to our reproaches.

(What difference does it make, you wonder, when we are meant to die in the dungeons of Knossos?

A great deal, is the answer. A great deal indeed.

The girls spin wool thread to while away the long hours aboard, and the boys knot them into belts. True, they might be used to find one's way to freedom; but true too that each one tells our tales, a testimony that survives even if we do not, an accusation against Athens that even the blind might decipher.)

Could not, Menestheus and Amphidocus wonder, it all have been a misunderstanding? They have little excuse for their slow wits; they competed alongside Androgeus of Crete, they saw that the discus meant to have killed him only caused a glancing blow, they saw that the Cretan ambassador followed him into the medics' tent and emerged alone. But still they would hope that all is as we have been told; that two kings' silent agreement was not the cause of our woes. 

“Ha,” says Melanippe, who’d managed the King’s linens, and seen a dozen things she ought not. "Best ask Queen Pasiphae and that foreign-born niece who shares our King's bed if they would have allowed any chance of _that_ happening."

And then consider Idas son of crafty Arcas, who offended the King’s witch-lover in court one too many times. Or perhaps it was only that she sought to do him a service, respecting his defiance of her mad whims in her own twisted way; “Arcas, shaped by the gods into a glorious riddle of a man,” she had sneered when the guards took his only child away, “thank me for ridding you of your one weakness. Doubtless you would not have had the strength to do it yourself, as I did.”

Arcas had wept before the King, and Idas, too. Aegeus only turned his face away. 

“At least _she_ has the decency to own up to her wickedness,” snaps Lysidice into the night. “His Highness would still have himself be considered noble. His Highness would still have himself _loved_.” She speaks little of what she had done to earn herself a place among our ranks, but it is no secret that she is easily the most beautiful of our number. We fear to ask, and feel we hardly need to.

(Open your mouth aboard, and you’ll taste nothing but salt air. They say the gods make it so, to prepare our tongues for bile and blood and despair.

They say: dry your heart out before you disembark, and deny the monster that awaits what little sustenance you can.)

Quietest of all is Theseus. They say he is like unto a god, the Horse-Lord reborn himself; they say he uncannily resembles the young Aegeus. No one is sure exactly from where he came, but everyone can recite at least one story they heard of him travels, when he trudged the long way to Athens and left behind corpse after corpse. They say Medea turned white and screeched when she saw him; they say she spit into her goblet and abandoned the city to its fate.

They say he ought to be King when Aegeus dies. They say he ought to be King _now_.

So no one, really, was surprised when it was announced that he had volunteered to join us in our grisly fate. Of course his so-called father wept copiously at the news-- _look at me,_ he told his countrymen, _I am one of you still, I have sacrificed as you have and yet I do not refuse as you wish to. What gives you the right to protest, when I do not, I who have yearned for a son for so long?_ He covered his face with ashes to mourn, gave his son the customary white sails of hope, and made it clear he did not expect, or wish, to see boat or sails or son ever again. 

Clever man, Aegeus. Never one to be cruel without a reason--and often more than one reason, if he could manage it. 

And yet--there is hope, Theseus tells us. Athens knows the truth, and will do nothing with it; but what of Crete? Possibly they do not understand what it is that desecrates their dancing-halls, that causes those mysterious disappearances, that speaks of the depravity of great men. And if they should, no, when they do, then we might charm their pretty princesses into assistance, coax their noble priestesses into mercy. We might steal ourselves from the shackles, and return to the boats, and hoist the sails high and black, so that Aegeus the Cruel might see us coming and despair. 

We see the sun's first rays rising above Crete's shores. We will not die in vain. 


End file.
